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Housing Technology 2012 conference
speakers

Senior executives from the UK's largest and/or most innovative housing providers, as well as industry analysts, technology providers and other industry experts, will deliver thought-provoking insights into future business and technology trends in housing and examples of leading-edge technology projects.

You can pick and choose throughout the day from any of the presentations below.

Keynote Presentations

Bill Payne, Former CEO, Metropolitan Housing Partnership
Leadership & technology - Getting the basics right first
Based on considerable experience and knowledge, this keynote talk will cover the fundamental importance of leading from the front and getting the basics right first before getting caught in the detail of people and processes. The talk will be illustrated by thought-provoking real-life examples of this approach to business and IT.

Customer Experience Foundation
Future housing - Different customer channels & different work practices
There is a great deal of speculation about how the tenant of the future will interact with housing organisations and about how technology will change the way in which organisations operate. In this presentation, we look at the next three years and talk about what is changing; what is a practical target operating model, what are the expectations of tenants, partners and staff, and can you really save money while delivering a better service?

Georgia Group
Leading through turbulent times
The world is changing fast. We are surrounded by the turbulence of seismic shifts in our cultures, our economies and our environment. As we approach this 'perfect storm', how are we going to navigate a competitive course, how can we motivate our people to deliver high performance and how are we to set our attitude? Manley Hopkinson's illustrated story of tackling 'Hurricane Michael' as a skipper of one of the yacht's in the world's toughest yacht race - the BT Global Challenge - provides all the lessons needed in a truly inspirational way.

Business & Technology Presentations

Aareon UK
More for less - Getting the maximum value out of an IT solution in challenging times
In the current economy, housing organisations are being forced to balance the goal of meeting increased customer demands with the real need to save money. The innovative use of IT can help you to achieve this seemingly impossible goal. Aareon UK, using case studies from some of its customers, will explain how it has helped organisations to increase service levels and efficiency while at the same time reducing both costs and the load on the IT department.

Adactus Housing
Co-regulation, transparency and the web
A tour and discussion of Adactus Housing Group's recent online developments that aim to provide a strong foundation for its co-regulation and transparency efforts. The presentation will cover AHG's forays into online customer consultations, crowd sourcing, blogging, its wiki-approach to providing customer information, use of online mapping and graphing services and adventures with 'infographics'. The focus of this session will be on sharing experience and practical tips to help you achieve some of these ideas at your own organisation.

Advanced 365
Improving flexible working and reducing IT costs through innovation
Advanced 365 provides IT outsourcing, cloud services, mobile services and application development to housing providers. Advanced 365 works in partnership with our customers to deliver an IT platform that supports flexible working and improves communications. The Advanced 365 platform enables our customers' staff and tenants to communicate anytime and anywhere, providing our customers with the cutting-edge, flexible and cost-effective IT services needed to meet the evolving demands of modern society.

Affinity Sutton (in conjunction with Capita IB Solutions)
An overview of Affinity Sutton's recent implementation of a procure-to-pay system from Capita IB Solutions
Affinity Sutton will concentrate on the technical aspects of project completion and explain its implementation approach and methodology. Starting with the procurement selection process, the presentation will discuss each facet of the project including project governance, an agreed joint approach and commitment to the implementation, effective training, and finishing with a summary of the positive and negative lessons Affinity Sutton has learnt during the process.

Britannic Technologies
Holistic next-generation communication strategies
This presentation will explore migration strategies from traditional communication models and environments, with distributed architecture, complex supply chains and integration challenges, to joined-up systems and managed-service models using datacentre hosting, cloud services, next-generation networks and centralised 'virtual' environments that deliver highly-available and resilient communication services, meet efficiency targets, reduce operating costs, and provide improved tenant access and services.

Broadacres Housing Association
Mobilising the workforce with Microsoft Lync
Broadacres has implemented Microsoft Lync as its sole telephony system and used wireless headsets for all staff including the contact centre and 'Lifeline' service. Mobile staff can also access Lync through their PDA or Blackberry and the new solution is really helping people to do their jobs better and communicate in a wider variety of ways.

Cadarn Housing Group
Where's my data gone? - Into the cloud
Many see cloud computing as the latest must-have accessory to their business. However, what does it mean in practical terms and what are the likely benefits for housing providers? This presentation describes Newydd Housing Association's (part of Cadarn Housing Group) experiences of looking into the cloud and taking Newydd into a highly controversial service. The presentation will also cover deciding which areas of the business can be moved into the cloud, finding the right provider, and performing the due diligence to protect the organisational data.

City West Housing Trust
Boosting the delivery of corporate objectives with enterprise-wide mobile
Many social housing providers are now reaping the benefits from mobile technology but often this technology can simply be deployed to support a single aspect of mobile workforce operations such as responsive repairs. This presentation will cover the extended use of enterprise mobile technology across multiple areas of the business to support key corporate objectives.

ConvergeOne
Is your infrastructure ready for the next-generation workspace?
Virtualisation experience infrastructure (VXI) is an end-to-end systems approach that delivers the next-generation virtual workspace by unifying virtual desktops, voice and video. It helps IT provide an exceptionally flexible and secure converged infrastructure for an uncompromised user experience.

Family Mosaic
Business-IT alignment & delivering demonstrable value
Synopsis to be confirmed

ffectis (Netherlands)
What's the cost of your IT? Revealing the results of 10 years of ICT cost benchmarking
Many IT professionals wonder whether they are spending too much - or perhaps too little on IT. This interactive session provides an overview of concrete results and experiences of ten years' benchmarking the total cost of ownership of IT within Dutch housing associations. Every year the numbers published lead to serious reflection amongst the participants - key indicators will be shown, the 'story behind the numbers' told and some of the best and worst practices and trends illustrated.

Gentoo Group
The importance of engaging front-line staff in the software development process
Gentoo has used front-line intelligence to gain a competitive edge within the ICT market. Streetwise has been developed by in-house IT specialists together with vital input from front-line staff. Using this methodology, it ensures the system meets the needs of the business and the wider commercial social housing market. As well as developing a product fit for purpose, this intelligence is crucial when developing and identifying new development or product opportunities, thereby adding value for end-users.

Halton Housing Trust
From sloth to chameleon
The presentation will describe the journey of Halton Housing Trust as an LSVT from its early days to the present, focusing particularly on how HHT has used ICT as an enabler to deliver its mission of 'operating as a business with a social conscience'. HHT is now embarking on its latest ICT project which is the replacement of all of its core business applications.

Hastoe Housing Association
Show me the T in VFM!
Hastoe has put technology at the heart its value for money (VFM) strategy and is reaping some unexpected rewards. But not everyone in Hastoe was so sure that technology could really improve VFM. Faced with a choice of radically improving operating margins or cutting the ambitious rural house-building programme, the sceptics were won round to the idea that IT is not just an expensive overhead, but the IT department had to take a long, hard look at itself first.

MET
Don't 'cloud' the issues
Security and infrastructure specialists MET will be discussing important considerations when moving to a cloud-based delivery model. Cloud computing is now a strategic ambition within many boardrooms so it's imperative that you choose a partner with specialist skills and experience for managing and ensuring a successful transition. Furthermore, the security and performance of your data will become even more critical when you have your applications delivered by several cloud providers.

Notting Hill Housing Group
Value for money - Cost reduction & containment strategies while developing new and better IT services
This presentation looks Notting Hill Housing Group's experience over the last 18 months of delivering a major change programme. Covering executive & business leader buy-in, the creation and delivery of new services, innovation and allowing headroom for investment in reducing costs, the presentation includes examples of the savings made and the innovations delivered.

Online Centres Foundation
Getting one million residents online
Half of everyone in the UK who is not online lives in social housing. It is vital that housing providers and other partners have a planned push to get at least one million more residents online and then using online services - housing providers will save millions of pounds and improve residents' lives at the same time.

Optical Record Systems
Business process outsourcing - Improving productivity & reducing the financial burden in the housing sector
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is widely used by companies worldwide as a way of reducing costs and allowing staff to focus on core business functionality. With the social housing sector now heavily focused on increasing productivity, customer satisfaction and making significant cost savings, could BPO be the answer to the sector's worries? ORS explores the business-critical daily tasks that waste housing providers' time and money and demonstrates how BPO could improve service delivery and reduce the financial burden.

Orbit Group
Innovation or utility IT - Why choose when you should be doing both?
Technology can be used to drive innovation and make your workforce more effective - truly business-aligned IT departments should know this and be providing solutions and thought leadership that drives improvements in business operations and innovation in service delivery. This 'Innovation or utility IT?' presentation outlines the approach Orbit has embedded in its IT department as an enabler for business change and efficiency.

Orchard Information Systems
How to engage and interact with your residents
Find out how to effectively manage your community-based projects, from establishing target groups and managing activities and events, through to final analysis of the impact and effectiveness of various strategies.

Places for People
Driving collective value through integrated performance management
An executive view of how to draw all aspects of a housing provider together, from CEO to operatives. The presentation will cover government, economic & regulatory drivers, operational resource management, tenant engagement, and long-term asset growth.

Radian Group
Increasing customer service levels - The benefits of CRM and integrated software
Radian's presentation will cover the benefits of CRM for both end-users and tenants, including an assessment of the time saved by the centralisation of information into one core application. This session will also look at workflow integration to streamline the reporting process for urgent repairs, and how document scanning can improve the quality, visibility and performance of business processes.

Regenda Group
The long road to corporate consolidation
Eight years ago, the Regenda group embarked on a journey to bring five disparate housing associations together to create a single trading entity, a task which was only completed in March 2011. This session explores the reasons for change, the various stages on the journey, our planning and project management processes, the supporting ICT systems, the financial impact on the organisation and, not least, the impact on the quality of customer services.

ReGenerateIT
Peabody Housing wi-fi pilots - Showcasing key findings
RegenerateIT partnered with Peabody in 2009 to roll out its free to end-user wireless internet package across two pilot estates in Islington and Fulham. While enabling tenants to get online, Peabody has also been able to consider its own presence, how it interacts with tenants, improve services and drive efficiencies in costs and delivery. This presentation will disseminate key findings, lessons learnt and highlight best practice.

Richmond Housing Partnership
New channels for customer services
How to deliver joined-up operations across the call centre, including web, email, social media, phone & SMS, and providing customers with 24/7/365 access to self-service systems.

Shepherds Bush Housing Group (via Internetalia)
To DLO or not to DLO, that is the question? The pros and cons of creating a DLO and bringing repairs & maintenance back in-house.
In 2007 Shepherds Bush Housing Association reached a cross roads in the delivery of its maintenance services; having used two large contractors since 2005, by 2007 one of the contractors had been sacked for financial irregularities, leaving all of the maintenance eggs in one basket. SBHA's board wanted the security of multiple contractors, while the officers wanted the simplicity and control afforded by one generic contractor. This presentation charts SBHA's journey from fledgling partnering contracts through to the formation of a joint venture company based on the principles of a DLO.

South Liverpool Homes
Agile development in housing
SLH's experience of partnering with Aspire Housing, Coast & Country Housing and Orchard Information Systems for the agile development of new IT solutions for resident involvement and survey campaigns.

Sovereign Business Integration
Shared services: Reseller or consumer of ICT?
Join the panel in a 'question & answer' session to debate the different models available for housing providers. Moderated by James Threapleton, director of housing at Sovereign Business Integration, the panellists will share their own knowledge of shared services, including experiences and considerations when considering this delivery model. The panel will include representatives from Eastend Homes, PML Group, Thrive Homes, and Tower Hamlets Community Housing.

Trident Housing
Achieving project success during a five-year IT change programme
Trident embarked on a major IT change programme in 2007, with the five-year strategy including a number of projects to provide better services for its customers. Major benefits are now being realised with increased productivity and customer satisfaction. There have been many technical challenges, partly from doing so much at once, but the project successes have been reflected in the benefits realisation, with significant changes to mobile working and the use of smart technology as a business enabler during 2010/11.

Viridian Housing
Multi channel and mobile service delivery
Viridian is modernising its service delivery to make the best use of new technology and to meet customers’ emerging expectations. Managing multiple channels of communication requires new approaches but the service centre remains at the heart of Viridian’s strategy. Which comes first – legacy application integration or customer-facing applications? Viridian has decided to prioritise the customer-facing parts of its service delivery and the presentation will describe the progress made so far and the challenges ahead.

Watford Community Housing Trust
Implementing the next generation of payroll, HR & self-service systems
This presentation will identify key learning points from the implementation of a new HR and payroll system. Along with a general overview of the project, the main topics to be discussed will be pre-implementation decisions around the division of responsibilities, project resources and preparation for the introduction of a self-service approach to payroll and absence management, and post-implementation experiences in terms of support, enhancement and staff acceptance.

Wolverhampton Homes
Can neighbourhood websites increase neighbourliness?
The benefits and challenges of setting up neighbourhood websites, how you can get started, and important lessons to learn.

Wyse Technology
Managing mobility and a changing device landscape
The current trends for increased mobility, new computing devices and changing device ownership, such as 'bring your own device', are creating real challenges for IT departments. At the same time, cloud-computing services let departmental computer users bypass the IT department if IT cannot deliver new services fast enough. This presentation will address these trends and how a strategy based on current cloud client and management technology enables secure, simple, and flexible access to services and keeps IT in a leadership position.

Xmbrace
Scheduling across your services
A booking and scheduling system is one of the fundamental building blocks of an organisation’s IT environment, whether to improve productivity, deliver back-office efficiencies, or enable a multi-disciplinary contact centre (or self-service platform) to handle the often complex booking rules when making appointments; Xmbrace offer one solution for all your services.